Cecil Rhodes eBook

The Cape to Cairo Railway was one of those vast schemes
that can be ascribed to the same quality in his character
as that which made him so essentially an Empire Maker.
It was a project of world-wide importance, and destined
to set the seal to the paramount influence of Great
Britain over the whole of Africa. It was a work
which, without Rhodes, would never have been accomplished.
He was right to feel proud of having conceived it;
and England, too, ought to be proud of having counted
among her sons a man capable of starting such a vast
enterprise and of going on with it despite the violent
opposition and the many misgivings with which it was
received by the general public.

CHAPTER VII.

RHODES AND THE AFRIKANDER BOND

To return to the subject of the negotiations which
undoubtedly took place between Rhodes and the leaders
of the Afrikander Bond during the war, I must say
that, so far as I know, they can rank among the most
disinterested actions of his life. For once there
was no personal interest or possible material gain
connected with his desire to bring the Dutch elements
in South Africa to look upon the situation from the
purely patriotic point of view, as he did himself.

It would have been most certainly to the advantage
of everybody if, instead of persisting in a resistance
which was bound to collapse, no matter how successful
it might appear to have been at its start, the Boers,
together with the Dutch Afrikanders, had sent the olive
branch to Cape Town. There would then have been
some hope of compromise or of coming to terms with
England before being crushed by her armies. It
would have been favourable to English interests also
had the great bitterness, which rendered the war such
a long and such a rabid one, not had time to spread
all over the country. Rhodes’ intervention,
which Sir Alfred Milner could not have refused had
he offered it, backed by the Boers on one side and
by the English Progressive party in the Colony on
the other, might have brought about great results
and saved many lives.

No blame, therefore, ought to attach to Cecil Rhodes
for wishing to present the Boer side of the case.
It would, indeed, have been wiser on the part of Mr.
Hofmeyr and other Bond leaders to have forgotten the
past and given a friendly hand to the one man capable
of unravelling the tangled skein of affairs.

At that period, whilst the siege of Kimberley was
in progress, it is certain that serious consideration
was given to this question of common action on the
part of Rhodes and of the two men who practically held
the destinies of the Transvaal in their hands—­de
Wet and General Botha, with Mr. Hofmeyr as representative
of the Afrikander Bond at their back. Why it
failed would for ever remain a mystery if one did not
remember that everywhere in South Africa lurked hidden
motives of self-interest which interfered with the
best intentions. The fruits of the seed of distrust
sown by the Raid were not easy to eradicate.